San Diego’s oldest and most popular annual live jazz concert series resumes this fall to its longtime home, with a typically stellar lineup but a new name.

After 16 years, what was previously the Athenaeum Jazz at the Neurosciences Institute series returns to the same coastal La Jolla venue as, simply, Athenaeum Jazz. The name-change was prompted by the lease for the auditorium reverting back to Scripps Research Institute, on whose campus the state-of-the-art auditorium stands.

That the jazz series is continuing is good news for local aficionados, who have often filled the pristine, 352-seat auditorium to hear such greats as pianist Brad Mehldau, guitarist Jim Hall and saxophonists Lee Konitz and Ravi Coltrane. Equally heartening is the first-rate talent that veteran Athenaeum jazz programming coordinator Daniel Atkinson has booked for this fall’s series.

But the departure of the Neurosciences Institute as the unusually enlightened operator of the auditorium may be felt strongly in the future, especially since it provided the auditorium free of charge to local nonprofit arts groups. Scripps, conversely, will charge $1,500 per event to rent the auditorium because Scripps’ annual budget does not include money for the arts.

Such longtime arts presenters as the Athenaeum and Mainly Mozart can raise the funds needed to offset the new rental fees. But many of the more than three-dozen other San Diego performing arts organizations — a good number of whose events at the auditorium were held free of charge — may face a bigger challenge to pay to rent the venue, which has become a regional arts landmark.